


how the daisies know

by softsilences



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Self-indulgent fluff, Sweet, are these even the right tags, ok now that sounds better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 09:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6112531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softsilences/pseuds/softsilences
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And the daisies know, even when thoughts stay as thoughts, and even when words die inside one’s throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how the daisies know

**Author's Note:**

> Because I thought of iwaoi and daisies.

“He…” Oikawa whispers, mostly to himself, to the space between his mouth and his chest. His legs swing restlessly back-and-forth, lips parting as he arches his neck up to look at the sky and finish. “He loves me,” he says.

A warm breeze starts to blow from his right, making the flower stem in his hand tilt slightly, and bringing with it the sweet smell of newly-cut grass and the crisp sound of leaves falling and brushing against the concrete ground. A group of kids race past him in a flurry of steps and giggles, and Oikawa shifts in his seat as soon as the kids run out of his earshot, all of a sudden reminded of the fact that he’s sitting alone on the park bench.

He waits for the previous silence to return before he takes in a deep breath and continues, voice only coming out of his mouth after a drawn-out exhale, “He loves me… not.”

Despite being under the shade of a lanky Gingko tree, the sun remains hot on Oikawa’s back, especially on the skin of his exposed nape. But even so, Oikawa thinks that the feeling he gets from seeing Iwaizumi smile is warmer. He doesn’t know exactly what makes his best friend’s smile so endearing to the extent that he’d found himself thinking about it for more than he wants to admit. There was just something about the way Iwaizumi’s lips quirked upwards whenever he would grin, something Oikawa couldn’t quite put his finger on. He suspects it has to do with the fact that Iwaizumi rarely smiles, and that Iwaizumi has this type of grin that was—for the lack of a better word—contagious.

Oikawa finds himself grinning at the image of Iwaizumi’s smiling face. _Very contagious_.

He resumes with plucking the petals off of the daisy in his hand as soon as he starts thinking of the time when Iwaizumi had laughed at him for hitting his own face with the ball he was tossing. And he goes slowly, one petal at a time, his thoughts alternating only between ‘Iwa-chan loves me’ and ‘Iwa-chan loves me not’.

It’s silly, Oikawa admits, but it’s something he does and finds calming whenever he feels a little _off_. Where he adapted the habit, Oikawa blames his grandmother who, in her creaky-as-a-rocking-chair voice, told him that all the questions an uncertain heart holds can be answered by plucking petals off of a daisy.

 

_“I don’t understand, grandma. How does that work? How does a daisy know?”_

_“Well, it’s really simple, Tooru. Because like all things that are a part of nature, a daisy is a good listener. It knows because it’s willing to lend you its petals to listen, even when your thoughts stay as thoughts, and even when yours words die inside your throat.”_

_“Will a daisy know if I’ll get any milk bread today, grandma?”_

_“Of course. But only if you ask if your mother will allow it.”_

 

Oikawa wrinkles his nose; back then, his grandmother had smelled too much of flour and cookie dough.

He decides to continue from where he left off earlier, too eager to know the answer to the question that had rooted itself inside his chest and had been continuously budding ever since he realized what Iwaizumi means to him. And he doesn’t stop, well, not until he’s down to the last petal and not until the last words coming out of his lips thread themselves into ‘Iwa-chan loves me’.

Oikawa frowns.

Just then, he hears a series of approaching footsteps. Each tap of foot against the ground comes instantly one after the other, suggesting that whoever it is who was making their way towards him was running. And in the short pause after the footsteps stop, Oikawa, even with his head now facing the concrete between his parted feet, recognizes who they belong to.

“ _Oi._ ” He hears the person greet, and Oikawa closes his eyes, smiling wryly. “What’s with that pose?”

Tipping his head up to face the other, Oikawa hums his answer. “Nothing, Iwa-chan,” he says, and his voice comes out too sweet even for his liking, and so he tries to compensate with a close-lipped smile.

“You’re sitting all alone and looking gloomy. Don’t tell me it’s nothing.”

Oikawa looks as Iwaizumi glances from the flower on his hand and then back to his face. “But I’m serious. I was just—”

And before Oikawa even knows it, Iwaizumi had already snagged the daisy away from his hand.

“Iwa-chan!”

“You’re hurting the flower, _Crappykawa_.”

Iwaizumi moves to take the vacant spot beside the other, all the while scrutinizing the barely recognizable flower in his hand. “Scoot over,” he says, narrowing his eyes until the skin of his forehead folds itself into wrinkles between his furrowed brows because, looking at Oikawa, it’s really more like the flower is the one hurting his friend.

Glaring, Iwaizumi purses his lips in an attempt to find out what Oikawa was doing before he arrived. He had been with the other guys from their year, playing a game of softball at the field. He’d tried to drag Oikawa along earlier, but Oikawa had refused him by saying ‘I’m not as athletic as you are, Iwa-chan’.

“Give it back,” Oikawa demands. He tries to steal the flower—or the stem with one petal left, to be more accurate—back from Iwaizumi, only to be held back by Iwaizumi’s free hand on one of his shoulders.

“I can’t believe you…” Iwaizumi raises the flower away from Oikawa’s grasp. “How old are you, again?”

“Old enough to be taken seriously when I ask for you to give it back,” Oikawa tries. “Now, _Iwa-chan—”_

They struggle for a bit, with Oikawa lunging his arms towards Iwaizumi and Iwaizumi pulling backwards from Oikawa’s face. And they only stop once Oikawa feels Iwaizumi’s hand tighten around his shoulder.

He pulls back to look at Iwaizumi full in the face, only to pause mid-way, suddenly hyperaware of how Iwaizumi’s thumb had went past the collar of his shirt and was now lightly digging into the skin of his neck. It’s then and there that Oikawa realizes how his and Iwaizumi’s noses are only a few centimeters away from touching at this angle. And so he reels his head, and eventually, his body back further so as to not stare too close into Iwaizumi’s eyes.

Once again, the wind starts to blow from their right, and together with the smell of grass and summer, Oikawa breathes in a whiff of Iwaizumi’s shirt—the familiar scent dampened a little bit by sweat. It reminds Oikawa of that time when he’d slept over at Iwaizumi’s house. It had been raining badly that day, and even though their houses were just a few blocks away from each other, Oikawa still chose to stay at Iwaizumi’s place. And of course Iwaizumi had complained at first, but he eventually gave up in the end, had even let Oikawa help him wash their drenched clothes that day and sleep beside him in bed just because Oikawa had whined ‘it’s cold Iwa-chan’.

“ _Oikawa._ ”

Jolting slightly, Oikawa blinks, waits for Iwaizumi to continue.

Iwaizumi leans his head closer to Oikawa’s before speaking, chases the distance that Oikawa had made between their faces, as if to taunt. “Tell me honestly,” he says.

Oikawa dips his head. “Tell you… what, Iwa-chan?”

“If whether or not _this_ ,” Iwaizumi starts, bringing the flower close to Oikawa’s face for emphasis before taking it away once Oikawa moves to reach for it again, “was the reason why you were being gloomy when I asked you to join us earlier.”

Oikawa opens his mouth to say ‘no’, only to close it again and let the word die inside his throat because he knows that Iwaizumi _knows_. Iwaizumi knows about his habit and about what he thinks of or feels whenever he so as much picks up a daisy. But still, Oikawa tries. “No? And I wasn’t being gloomy—”

Iwaizumi cuts him off with a sigh. He takes his other hand off of Oikawa’s shoulder. “Hey, you’re really stupid with feelings, aren’t you?”

Oikawa lets out a muted gasp. He’s about to call Iwaizumi ‘mean’ as usual when Iwaizumi hands him back the daisy and chucks it across his palm.

“Flowers don’t have anything to do with how a person really feels for someone, _dumbass_ ,” Iwaizumi says, almost as if he was snapping at something Oikawa just said. He looks at how Oikawa turns his head down at the daisy that was now back in his hand. “If you’re really troubled about how the other person feels for you, you can always talk to me about it, stupid,” he adds.

At that, Oikawa snorts loudly, letting out a short laugh. He doesn’t see how Iwaizumi raises an eyebrow at him but he explains anyway, “I don’t really get it but, somehow, you calling me ‘dumbass’ and ‘stupid’ sounds comforting rather than mean to me now, Iwa-chan.”

“That’s because I _am_ trying to comfort you. God you’re stupid.”

Oikawa throws his head back as he starts laughing even more, shoulders shaking and eyes turning into small crescents as he does, but he stops once Iwaizumi elbows him to the gut and stands up to walk away.

“Iwa-chan, wait!” Oikawa grabs Iwaizumi by the arm, making Iwaizumi stop in his tracks. “I knew you were trying to comfort me. But you’re not supposed to use ‘dumbass’ and ‘stupid’ when you’re comforting someone!”

Iwaizumi turns to face Oikawa again. “But it worked, didn’t it?” he asks, and Oikawa nods.

“Yes. I know. It did. And you’re right.” Oikawa smiles weakly, letting go of Iwaizumi’s arm. He feels for the daisy in his hand again, twisting its stem between his fingers as he nods once again. “Yeah. Maybe flowers really don’t have anything to do with how a person really feels for someone.”

“Of course they don’t,” Iwaizumi says as a matter-of-factly.

“But if it’s like that… Then, how am I supposed to know how the other person feels for me?”

“You ask them, obviously. How else would you know unless you hear it from them?”

All of a sudden, the others call for the both of them in the distance, beckoning them with waves and telling them that it was about time to leave for lunch.

Still, instead of leaving, Oikawa continues to prod on the topic. “You’re right, but…”

“But what?”

Oikawa sees the way Iwaizumi glances at their friends, and despite his unsettled feelings, he knows that they should go. This wasn’t a question he thinks Iwaizumi would be able to answer, after all. _‘But grandma said that daisies know,_ _even when thoughts stay as thoughts, and even when words die inside one’s throat’_. Oikawa sighs and then says, murmurs, “Nothing.”

Iwaizumi narrows his eyes at Oikawa. He turns to the other side to see their friends calling out to them from the distance before he says, “Then, come on. Let’s go. They’re waiting for us.”

He waits for Oikawa to stand up, and they start walking as soon as Oikawa does. But after only a few steps, Oikawa suddenly grabs Iwaizumi again, and this time, he grabs Iwaizumi by the end of the shirt.

“What now?” Iwaizumi quizzes. “I thought you said it was nothing?”

And he looks a bit irritated this time, but Oikawa doesn’t care enough as much as how he cares for the thought that’s raging inside his head faster and louder than the sound of birds flapping their wings over his head because what if iwaizumi knows? What if Iwaizumi was a daisy? His daisy. Iwaizumi had always been a good listener, after all, and he almost always knows what’s up even when Oikawa doesn’t tell him anything.

“ _Oi—_ ”

“I know. I’m sorry! But before we go,” Oikawa begins, and he watches as Iwaizumi raises an eyebrow at him. “Please… just tell me, Iwa-chan.” _Do you love me?_

“Tell you what?”

“Whether it’s a yes—” Oikawa’s voice breaks, and he swallows, biting on his lower lip. He doesn’t realize the pressure he’s putting on his fingertips as he continues, hand practically breaking the daisy’s stem into two, “—or a no.”

Silence.

The wind blows from the left this time, and Oikawa lets the smell of grass and summer filter through his constricting lungs, lets the sound of the leaves falling and brushing against the concrete mask the sound of the blood rushing and the erratic beating he hears inside his ears.

The group of kids that had ran past him earlier comes back. But instead of feeling alone after the kids run away from his earshot once again, Oikawa feels the opposite. Because when he lets go of Iwaizumi’s shirt, Iwaizumi is still there. And because when he looks up, he finds Iwaizumi staring right back at him.

“Whatever that question answers to…” Iwaizumi says, his voice hushed and lower than how it had been so far the whole time he’d spent talking with Oikawa, “You know I wouldn’t be able to say ‘no’.”

A short pause. Oikawa’s heart beats louder than how the wind blows the sound of rustling leaves into his ears.

“Come on. Let’s go now,” Iwaizumi says.

Oikawa smiles even as Iwaizumi starts walking away without waiting for him.

“ _Oikawa_. We can’t keep them waiting—”

“Yeah! I’m coming. Just a moment.”

Oikawa opens one of his closed hands to see that even after being enclosed inside a fist, the daisy in his hand still had the last petal attached to it. He decides to continue where he had left off earlier.

Inhaling, he says, “He loves me not,” before finally plucking the last petal. However, to Oikawa’s surprise, the petal doesn’t come off as a whole. Instead, it splits into two, and Oikawa rushes to Iwaizumi as soon as he plucks the last bit of the petal and thinks, mouths, tells the daisy his thanks, “He loves me.”

**Author's Note:**

> And I thought I'd never attempt fluff... but... yeah... haha.
> 
> This is (a supposed to be vday fic but real life interfered and also I got lazy orz) for [ Nikki ](https://twitter.com/kotorineli), [ Canni](https://twitter.com/LollipopLeqs), and [ Talli](https://twitter.com/tallihoozo)! 
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> [ twitter](https://twitter.com/oshietooru) l [ tumblr](http://oshietooru.tumblr.com/).


End file.
